Confessions for the Homesick

I long for you in stolen moments. Deep in the recesses of my mind I know that the “you” I’ve created is not the “you” you have become. But what if it was? What if all these dreams and visions of that alternate universe were true? 

What if you walked through my door, took my face in your hands and kissed me like you’d been saving up for me your whole life? I want to think you’d scoop me up like the famous scene from “An officer and a gentleman,” and carry me down my steps, place me gently in your truck and we’d ride off into the sunset (but of course have me back before my children came home because, WHO AM I if not a mom now first?)

I want to believe that I truly saw a sparkle in your eye like lightning when you looked into my eyes. I want to believe that you would really go out of your way, detour a few hundred miles, to hold me again. I’d like to think the crook of your neck still fits my face and your collar still smells like old spice and Irish springs... that you give me your sweatshirt again and I sleep in it every night like I did after we first kissed.

Maybe it’s not you I long for on nights I lay in bed staring at the shadows crossing the ceiling. Maybe it’s someone else familiar but new all over. It still feels like homecoming knowing the feeling of my hand in yours and the spot beneath your lip where the scruff doesn’t grow. My lips remember every spot like muscle memory should.

I want to believe that the dreams I had when I was married that wracked me with guilt to the point I forced my then husband to come along with me to therapy so I could confess to what felt like an adulterous affair... I want to believe those dreams were you thinking them into existence in my subconscious. I can remember how my husband laughed at this confession, and how he’d asked if I’ve ever actually thought of anyone outside of dreams and my answer was always no but it was always you. You who were forever unobtainable and never to be heard of again. He would later express disbelief that I’d never acted on any advances from other men, that I’d never thought of being with someone other than him. I only ever dreamed of you and confessed those burning embers of guilt again and again to his heart. I took my vows so faithfully and every thought of you felt like a betrayal to them.

This isn’t about him, or the marriage that should not have been. This is about you, coming home to me maybe one day... someday soon.